“Here's copy for you, maybe,” he said. “The name is Priest—William Pitman Priest is the way he wrote it. He got in here this morning, an old-time Southerner; and already he's got every coon bellhop round the place fighting for a chance to wait on him. He's the real thing all right, I guess—looks it and talks it too. You ought to be able to have some fun with him.”
“Where's he registered from?” asked Malley hopefully.
“From Kentucky—that's all; just Kentucky, with no town given,” said Mac, grinning.
“There're still a few of those old Southerners left that'll register from a whole state at large. Why, there he goes now!” said the room clerk, and he pointed.
Across the lobby, making slow headway against weaving tides of darting, hurrying figures, was moving a stoutish and elderly form clad in a fashion that made it look doubly and trebly strange among those marble and onyx precincts. A soft black hat of undoubted age and much shapelessness was jammed down upon the head, and from beneath its wide brim at the rear escaped wisps of thin white hair that curled over the upturned coat collar. The face the hat shaded was round and pink, chubby almost, and ended in a white chin beard which, as Malley subsequently said in his story, flowed down its owner's chest like a point-lace jabot. There was an ancient caped overcoat of a pattern that had been fashionable perhaps twenty years ago and would be fashionable again, no doubt, twenty years hence; there were gray trousers that had never been pressed apparently; and, to finish off with, there was a pair of box-toed, high-heeled boots of a kind now seen mostly in faded full-length photographs of gentlemen taken in the late seventies—boots with wrinkled tops that showed for four inches or more and shined clear up to the trouser-line with some sort of blacking that put a dull bluish iridescent blush upon the leather, almost like the colors on a dove's breast feathers.
“Thanks for the tip, Mac,” said Malley, and he made off after the old man, who by now had turned and was maneuvering down the corridor toward where a revolving door turned unceasingly, like a wheel in a squirrel's cage. “Oh, colonel!” called out Malley on a venture, jibing through the human currents and trying to overtake the stout, broad figure ahead of him. An exceedingly young, exceedingly important person, who looked as though he might be prominent in the national guard or on some governor's staff, half rose from a leather lounge and glanced about inquiringly, but the old man in the cape and boots kept on.
“Major!” tried Malley vainly. “Major! Just a minute, please.” And then, “Judge! Oh, judge!” he called as a last resort, and at that his quarry swung about on his heels and stopped, eying him with whimsical, mild blue eyes under wrinkly lids.
“Son,” he said in a high, whiny voice which instantly appealed to Malley's sense of the picturesque, “was it me that you've been yellin' at?”
Malley answered, telling his name and his business. A moment later he was surprised to find himself shaking hands warmly with the older man.
“Malley, did you say?” the judge was inquiring almost eagerly. “Well, now, son, I'm glad to meet up with you. Malley is a fairly familiar name and a highly honored one down in our part of the country. There was a captain in Forrest's command of your name—Captain Malley—a mighty gallant soldier and a splendid gentleman! You put me right sharply in mind of him too—seem to favor him considerable round the eyes. Are you closely related to the Southern branch of the family, suh?”